Two students can look extremely similar on paper. Same age, same grades, same diagnoses listed on the neuropsych report. If one student has never found “her people” and the other gets easily distracted because she’s such a social butterfly, their school lists might not have any matching schools on them.
Early in my therapeutic consulting work, I cross-checked a list for a student coming out of a wilderness program with a trusted colleague. One school in Montana, one in North Carolina, and one in Connecticut. One with equine work, one with a skateboard vibe, and one with a hobby farm and a strong theater department.
Her response? “I don’t … understand … this list?”
It was a fair question.
Starting with the Category
A common (and perfectly sound) way to build a list starts with the category. If a student needs recovery support, the first filter is recovery programs. Then age. Then interests: the athlete, the artist, the gamer, the student who is still finding themselves. Filter, sort, and you have your list. Plenty of consultants work this way and do good, ethical, and caring work on behalf of their families.
That said, I use a different approach.
Values and Prevailing Needs
Whether a student is leaving a therapeutic setting or a large public high school, my first two questions are the same: What are the family’s values, and what are the prevailing needs? We set the priorities together, and I build from there.
That means looking at the whole student. For a young person in early sobriety, I want to know what kind of substance or technology use led to the challenge (a process addiction and a substance use addiction call for different things), how much recovery work they need now, and what interventions they’re responding to in their current program.
For an athlete with dyslexia, I want to know how well remediated their learning challenges are, what their athletic hopes are post-high-school, and what other interests round out their sense of self.
For one student, finding purpose in the community and one good mentor will do more than daily recovery groups. For another, the academic picture has to be spot on or they are at risk of a relapse. A student whose dyslexia was never fully remediated may need a school that can continue that work, because when school falls apart, self-esteem tends to go with it (and for a student with substance challenges, the addiction follows.)
The research on the overlap between learning disabilities and substance abuse supports this approach. A report from Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse noted that school struggles and addiction share many of the same risk factors: lower self-esteem, academic difficulty, loneliness, and the desire for social acceptance (APA Monitor, 2001). A longitudinal study that followed young people from age 12 to 19 found that a learning disability in middle or high school was associated with a 3x increase in risk for a substance use disorder, even after accounting for behavior problems and family structure (Beitchman et al., 2001).
For that student, the right academic remediation is a protective factor, and it can matter more than a recovery group on campus.
Academics and athletics aren’t the only criteria we prioritize. Family values, clinical needs, geography, special interests, and even landscape become a part of the conversation. Each is weighted differently depending on the individual student.
What Can Be Supplemented (and What Can’t)
Once the priorities are clear, I sort them. Some needs are easy to supplement if a school doesn’t offer them. Others would be incredibly difficult to supplement if they’re missing from the school community itself.
I can almost always find a local family therapist to support clinical work.
I can almost always help a family figure out the transportation logistics to a school that’s a little farther away.
I can’t outsource an LGBTQ+ affirming community.
I can’t manufacture the woods and nature that create a sense of safety for a student who needs them.
Some of these priorities are non-negotiables, rather than just preferences, and that has to get factored in to the discussion. In The Trevor Project’s 2020 national survey of 40,001 LGBTQ young people, having an LGBTQ-affirming school had the strongest association with lower odds of a suicide attempt in the past year of any affirming space they measured (The Trevor Project, 2020). And a systematic review of green space research found that exposure to nature was most consistently associated with better mood and lower stress in adolescents (Zhang et al., 2020).
The local area matters, too. Some supports are much easier to find near a city than in a rural community, so a school’s location changes what I can add around it.
The Delightful, Hidden Puzzle
With the criteria set, I start building the list. Broadly. I don’t stick to tight categories of “Therapeutic Schools” or “Connecticut Day Schools with Learning Support”. Rather, I’m calling on the miles and miles on the road, the hours spent talking with admissions officers, the students I’ve had at these schools, and my conversations with other consultants who have had students there too. At Crossbridge, we visit and evaluate more than 100 schools and therapeutic programs every year. (For context, IECA suggests consultants visit a minimum of 20 campuses a year to stay current [IECA].) That’s where we gather the subtext behind our recommendations: we know the advisors who mentor specific students well, which programs have a local partnership that’s not on their website, and how past clients have fared.
We know that school connectedness (a student’s belief that the adults and peers at school care about them) is a strong protective factor against substance use and other mental health struggles (CDC), and we know that connectedness comes from finding the right fit.
That’s how the Montana / North Carolina / Connecticut list came together. The student needed high-quality, in-person academics, sobriety support, and family therapy. On paper, the school the family eventually chose didn’t even have substance abuse programming. But it made frequent in-person family visits possible, and I knew there was a therapist at the school who had worked with adolescents in recovery and had space on his caseload. Bonus points for challenging academics and the specific gym equipment the student wanted. A few years later, that student graduated and is thriving. If I’d gotten rigidly stuck on the category, that school wouldn’t have even made the list.
Questions to Ask About Any School List
Whoever builds your child’s list, you should be able to follow the reasoning. A few questions that help:
What did you weigh most heavily for my child, and why?
Which of my child’s needs could be supported outside the school, and which have to be provided by the school itself?
What do you know about each school that isn’t on its website?
Have you visited any of these schools recently? (If not, it’s not a dealbreaker — though a consultant should have visited most of them at some point. If the visits weren’t in the last couple of years, you’ll want to make sure you get on the ground yourself to see the schools in person.)
Do you receive any compensation from the schools you recommend? (IECA and TCA member consultants are paid directly by their clients and don’t accept compensation from schools.)
A good list may look a little odd at first glance. But it should make complete sense once you hear why each school is on it.
I’m committed to my quirky logic :).
Whether you’re running your own search, working through The (Semi-DIY) School Search Workshop™, or partnering with us through our 1:1 consulting, we’d love to help you build a list that makes sense for your child.
Rebekah Jordan, M.Ed., is founder and partner at Crossbridge Consulting, where she helps families navigate school placement, therapeutic programs, and the decisions that come with a child who needs something different.
Sources
Daw, J. (2001). Substance abuse linked to learning disabilities and behavioral disorders. Monitor on Psychology, 32(7). apa.org
Beitchman, J. H., et al. (2001). Substance use disorders in young adults with and without LD: Predictive and concurrent relationships. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 34(4), 317–332.
The Trevor Project. (2020). Research Brief: LGBTQ & Gender-Affirming Spaces. thetrevorproject.org
Zhang, Y., Mavoa, S., Zhao, J., Raphael, D., & Smith, M. (2020). The association between green space and adolescents’ mental well-being: A systematic review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(18), 6640. doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17186640
Steiner, R. J., et al. (2019). Adolescent connectedness and adult health outcomes. Pediatrics, 144(1). CDC summary
Van Dam, L., et al. (2018). Does natural mentoring matter? A multilevel meta-analysis on the association between natural mentoring and youth outcomes. American Journal of Community Psychology, 62(1–2), 203–220. doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12248